Legal aid lawyer fired amid turmoil at agency

Published: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 at 12:54 p.m.

Last Modified: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 at 12:54 p.m.

SARASOTA - Elizabeth Boyle, the longtime head of Gulfcoast Legal Services' Sarasota office, has been fired, four months after she filed a federal age discrimination complaint against the new executive director of the St. Petersburg-based nonprofit.

The nonprofit has about 34 paid staff members and offices in five cities.

Boyle grew Gulfcoast's Sarasota office into a legal powerhouse with the help of a few staff attorneys and more than a dozen experienced volunteers — mostly retired lawyers who provided their legal expertise for free.

Before she fired Boyle, Gulfcoast's new executive director, Kathleen M. Mullin, got rid of the volunteers, which prompted Boyle to file her age discrimination complaint.

“Volunteers have rights, too,” Boyle said. “They are covered under the Age Discrimination Employment Act of 1967.”

Mullin declined to be interviewed for this story, insisting on written questions delivered by email.

“As someone with ample experience with the press, I have a rule as well that I do not grant telephone interviews with reporters who appear to have formulated a hostile story line,” Mullin wrote. “Email provides me the opportunity that what I say is accurately captured and relayed.”

Mullin took over the nonprofit Gulfcoast Legal Services in December. Before moving to Florida, she appeared as a legal consultant on television programs including “The O'Reilly Factor,” “Nancy Grace,” “Doctor Phil” and other programs on CNN, FOX News and Court TV.

She replaced the retiring John P. Cunningham, who served as Gulfcoast's executive director for more than three decades and who hired Boyle in 2002.

“I think very highly of Elizabeth. She was a straight-A employee,” Cunningham said. “She had a good work ethic. She was very productive. I felt confident when she took on a case it would be handled properly.”

Mullin disciplined Boyle for her unwillingness to drop a case involving 29-year-old quadriplegic, Gina Ruiz, who was injured in a car crash on Nov. 25. It took rescuers more than 30 minutes to cut Ruiz from her car.

Boyle said she reported Mullin's “denial of service” order to Gulfcoast's grantors and its board of directors. Boyle also offered to litigate Ruiz's case on her own — after-hours for no pay — once Mullin told her to drop the case.

Boyle said she wanted to be certain that Ruiz would be placed in a nursing home with a good reputation and close to her family after she was released from Bradenton's Blake Medical Center.

“The case was already open,” Boyle said. “I was asking permission to do more: travel to the hospital, meet with the client, find a safe and appropriate discharge facility and protect her civil rights. The case needed more than a phone conversation.”

Ruiz can move her right arm a bit, her left arm a bit more, but she lacks dexterity in her hands.

“I broke my neck — C5 and C6,” she said Wednesday. “They haven't given me a prognosis, just that I'm a quad. They don't expect me to walk again, but I will prove them wrong.”

“Elizabeth was only trying to help me,” Ruiz said. “She gave me good info. She helped me and they fired her for it. That is not right.”

The complaint

In her complaint with the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, Boyle claims she and others suffered discrimination based upon their age, and that she suffered retaliation for her whistleblowing.

According to the federal complaint, Mullin sent Boyle a written reprimand for allegedly “allowing a volunteer Florida-licensed attorney to do volunteer work for a client at our legal aid office on March 12, 2013.”

Boyle contends that there was nothing wrong with permitting experienced volunteers to help clients, which she said has been a time-proven method of stretching her limited staff. All volunteer lawyers operated under her supervision, she said.

On the date Mullin specified in the reprimand, Boyle said she was on a cruise to New Zealand with her husband.

“I objected to the warning by providing Ms. Mullin with these facts, which would have made it impossible for me to have done what she accused me of having done, and she never addressed nor acknowledged my written objection,” the EEOC complaint states.

On May 9, Mullin drove to the Sarasota office, suspended Boyle and ordered her off the property. Boyle wrote in her EEOC complaint that the suspension was to investigate the reporting of volunteer hours and her work with Ruiz.

Boyle said that she told Mullin in Gulfcoast's parking lot that she was due in court the next day, and that she had the client's case file in her car.

“She told me she'd handle it,” Boyle said. “She said another attorney would be assigned to cover the case.”

That night, no one called Boyle about the case, or made arrangements to retrieve the client's file, Boyle said.

The next day, Boyle went to the courthouse intending to deliver the file to the Gulfcoast attorney. She signed in as “Elizabeth Boyle — not representing Gulfcoast Legal Services.”

When a Gulfcoast attorney arrived in the courtroom, Boyle handed over the file and left. She never met with the client, and the hearing had not yet begun, she said.

Mullin fired her the next business day.

“During your administrative leave, you were advised that your duties were suspended,” her termination letter from Mullin states. “Notwithstanding this directive, you appeared in court on the morning of May 10, 2013. You were sitting in the courtroom with a Gulfcoast Legal Services' client and in possession of client documents.”

Investigation

Once Boyle filed her EEOC complaint, Gulfcoast's board of directors created a “personnel committee” consisting of four of its members, to investigate her allegations.

The board members drove to the Sarasota office. Boyle had assembled 14 people for the committee to interview.

The staff and volunteers from the Sarasota office told the board members about Boyle's hard work.

“Ultimately, we learned that the four attorneys — the personnel committee — had been persuaded by the evidence we presented,” Boyle said. “They believed the problems we raised were valid.”

But before the four committee members could report their findings to the board, either orally or in writing, the board's chairman — James W. Fox Jr., a professor at the Stetson University College of Law — removed all the members of the personnel committee.

Fox declined to comment for this story, saying, “Any questions about personnel issues should be directed to Ms. Mullin.”

Tampa attorney Lynn E. Hanshaw was on the board and assigned to its short-lived personnel committee. She and several members of the committee resigned from the board in protest.

“We were stopped. The investigation stopped,” Hanshaw said. “We were under the guidance of counsel — doing what we believed we were charged with doing — and the president of the board disagreed, and felt we'd gone beyond what we were charged to do, so he fired us from the personnel committee, not the board. I left the board because I was fired from the personnel committee for performing the duties we were charged to perform.”

Board member Ramon Carrion, an attorney based in Clearwater, said the board may still consider Mullin's decision to fire Boyle. But the date of the next board hearing has yet to be determined.

“Our job as board members is to make a determination the executive director acted in good faith. Beyond that, I'm not going to pass judgment on any decision,” Carrion said. “The board will review the decision. We have to look at it. It may affirm. It may critique. I don't believe we have any limits, but certainly we have a duty to review.”

St. Petersburg attorney Barry M. Salzman, like most other board members, declined to comment about Boyle's firing.

“It's not my place to do that,” Salzman said. “I'm not going to put myself in that firestorm.”

'A great loss'

Boyle said she is concerned for the welfare of the volunteers who were let go.

She has a list of nine names of attorneys who donated their time at the Sarasota office. The youngest is 62. The oldest, 91.

Boyle has supervised more than 250 volunteers during the 11 years she spent at Gulfcoast. She managed more than 7,700 cases, and served as the primary advocate on 3,800.

In the past four years, she brought in more than $500,000 to the program from foreclosure work, including grants from Sarasota County and private donors.

In 2010, she received the Steven Goldstein Award for excellence in a legal aid case from the Florida Bar, sharing the award with volunteer attorney Jim McDonald, who is 80.

A native of a small town in Mississippi, Boyle is married to Bradenton Police Chief Michael Radzilowski.

Like his wife, the police chief said he was concerned about Ruiz, and the denial of services.

“If this is how Gulfcoast Legal Services is going to provide legal aid to our disabled, then I believe that Pinellas, Sarasota and Manatee counties should not fund this organization,” he said.

Phillip D. King is executive director of the Glasser Schoenbaum Human Services Center in Sarasota, which hosts Gulfcoast and other social service agencies, who together serve more than 10,000 people a month.

“During the recent economic crisis, Gulfcoast has been vital in their efforts to help many people save their homes, as well as helping them with other issues. The success of Gulfcoast has been largely due to the passion and leadership of Elizabeth Boyle,” King said. “We consider her not being here on campus a great loss.”

In an email to her staff, Mullin called this story "inaccurate," but provided no details.

<p><em>SARASOTA</em> - Elizabeth Boyle, the longtime head of Gulfcoast Legal Services' Sarasota office, has been fired, four months after she filed a federal age discrimination complaint against the new executive director of the St. Petersburg-based nonprofit. </p><p>Boyle, 54, says her firing stems from her refusal to drop a case involving a 29-year-old quadriplegic.</p><p>“I was told I was being disciplined because I had opened a case after being told to reject it,” Boyle said. “This young, single mom needed help. I would make the same decision again.”</p><p>Boyle and other Gulfcoast attorneys provide free legal advice about foreclosures, family law — including domestic violence and emergency protection orders — paternity and child-custody cases, elder law, immigration and more.</p><p>The nonprofit has about 34 paid staff members and offices in five cities.</p><p>Boyle grew Gulfcoast's Sarasota office into a legal powerhouse with the help of a few staff attorneys and more than a dozen experienced volunteers — mostly retired lawyers who provided their legal expertise for free.</p><p>Before she fired Boyle, Gulfcoast's new executive director, Kathleen M. Mullin, got rid of the volunteers, which prompted Boyle to file her age discrimination complaint.</p><p>“Volunteers have rights, too,” Boyle said. “They are covered under the Age Discrimination Employment Act of 1967.”</p><p>Mullin declined to be interviewed for this story, insisting on written questions delivered by email.</p><p>“As someone with ample experience with the press, I have a rule as well that I do not grant telephone interviews with reporters who appear to have formulated a hostile story line,” Mullin wrote. “Email provides me the opportunity that what I say is accurately captured and relayed.”</p><p>Mullin took over the nonprofit Gulfcoast Legal Services in December. Before moving to Florida, she appeared as a legal consultant on television programs including “The O'Reilly Factor,” “Nancy Grace,” “Doctor Phil” and other programs on CNN, FOX News and Court TV.</p><p>She replaced the retiring John P. Cunningham, who served as Gulfcoast's executive director for more than three decades and who hired Boyle in 2002.</p><p>“I think very highly of Elizabeth. She was a straight-A employee,” Cunningham said. “She had a good work ethic. She was very productive. I felt confident when she took on a case it would be handled properly.”</p><p>Mullin disciplined Boyle for her unwillingness to drop a case involving 29-year-old quadriplegic, Gina Ruiz, who was injured in a car crash on Nov. 25. It took rescuers more than 30 minutes to cut Ruiz from her car.</p><p>Boyle said she reported Mullin's “denial of service” order to Gulfcoast's grantors and its board of directors. Boyle also offered to litigate Ruiz's case on her own — after-hours for no pay — once Mullin told her to drop the case.</p><p>Boyle said she wanted to be certain that Ruiz would be placed in a nursing home with a good reputation and close to her family after she was released from Bradenton's Blake Medical Center.</p><p>“The case was already open,” Boyle said. “I was asking permission to do more: travel to the hospital, meet with the client, find a safe and appropriate discharge facility and protect her civil rights. The case needed more than a phone conversation.”</p><p>Ruiz can move her right arm a bit, her left arm a bit more, but she lacks dexterity in her hands.</p><p>“I broke my neck — C5 and C6,” she said Wednesday. “They haven't given me a prognosis, just that I'm a quad. They don't expect me to walk again, but I will prove them wrong.”</p><p>“Elizabeth was only trying to help me,” Ruiz said. “She gave me good info. She helped me and they fired her for it. That is not right.”</p><p><b>The complaint</b></p><p>In her complaint with the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, Boyle claims she and others suffered discrimination based upon their age, and that she suffered retaliation for her whistleblowing. </p><p>According to the federal complaint, Mullin sent Boyle a written reprimand for allegedly “allowing a volunteer Florida-licensed attorney to do volunteer work for a client at our legal aid office on March 12, 2013.”</p><p>Boyle contends that there was nothing wrong with permitting experienced volunteers to help clients, which she said has been a time-proven method of stretching her limited staff. All volunteer lawyers operated under her supervision, she said.</p><p>On the date Mullin specified in the reprimand, Boyle said she was on a cruise to New Zealand with her husband.</p><p>“I objected to the warning by providing Ms. Mullin with these facts, which would have made it impossible for me to have done what she accused me of having done, and she never addressed nor acknowledged my written objection,” the EEOC complaint states.</p><p>On May 9, Mullin drove to the Sarasota office, suspended Boyle and ordered her off the property. Boyle wrote in her EEOC complaint that the suspension was to investigate the reporting of volunteer hours and her work with Ruiz.</p><p>Boyle said that she told Mullin in Gulfcoast's parking lot that she was due in court the next day, and that she had the client's case file in her car.</p><p>“She told me she'd handle it,” Boyle said. “She said another attorney would be assigned to cover the case.”</p><p>That night, no one called Boyle about the case, or made arrangements to retrieve the client's file, Boyle said.</p><p>The next day, Boyle went to the courthouse intending to deliver the file to the Gulfcoast attorney. She signed in as “Elizabeth Boyle — not representing Gulfcoast Legal Services.” </p><p>When a Gulfcoast attorney arrived in the courtroom, Boyle handed over the file and left. She never met with the client, and the hearing had not yet begun, she said.</p><p>Mullin fired her the next business day.</p><p>“During your administrative leave, you were advised that your duties were suspended,” her termination letter from Mullin states. “Notwithstanding this directive, you appeared in court on the morning of May 10, 2013. You were sitting in the courtroom with a Gulfcoast Legal Services' client and in possession of client documents.” </p><p><b>Investigation</b> </p><p>Once Boyle filed her EEOC complaint, Gulfcoast's board of directors created a “personnel committee” consisting of four of its members, to investigate her allegations. </p><p>The board members drove to the Sarasota office. Boyle had assembled 14 people for the committee to interview.</p><p>The staff and volunteers from the Sarasota office told the board members about Boyle's hard work.</p><p>“Ultimately, we learned that the four attorneys — the personnel committee — had been persuaded by the evidence we presented,” Boyle said<!---->. “They believed the problems we raised were valid.”</p><p>But before the four committee members could report their findings to the board, either orally or in writing, the board's chairman — James W. Fox Jr., a professor at the Stetson University College of Law — removed all the members of the personnel committee.</p><p>Fox declined to comment for this story, saying, “Any questions about personnel issues should be directed to Ms. Mullin.”</p><p>Tampa attorney Lynn E. Hanshaw was on the board and assigned to its short-lived personnel committee. She and several members of the committee resigned from the board in protest.</p><p>“We were stopped. The investigation stopped,” Hanshaw said. “We were under the guidance of counsel — doing what we believed we were charged with doing — and the president of the board disagreed, and felt we'd gone beyond what we were charged to do, so he fired us from the personnel committee, not the board. I left the board because I was fired from the personnel committee for performing the duties we were charged to perform.”</p><p>Board member Ramon Carrion, an attorney based in Clearwater, said the board may still consider Mullin's decision to fire Boyle. But the date of the next board hearing has yet to be determined.</p><p>“Our job as board members is to make a determination the executive director acted in good faith. Beyond that, I'm not going to pass judgment on any decision,” Carrion said. “The board will review the decision. We have to look at it. It may affirm. It may critique. I don't believe we have any limits, but certainly we have a duty to review.” </p><p>St. Petersburg attorney Barry M. Salzman, like most other board members, declined to comment about Boyle's firing. </p><p>“It's not my place to do that,” Salzman said. “I'm not going to put myself in that firestorm.” </p><p><b>'A great loss'</b></p><p>Boyle said she is concerned for the welfare of the volunteers who were let go. </p><p>She has a list of nine names of attorneys who donated their time at the Sarasota office. The youngest is 62. The oldest, 91. </p><p>Boyle has supervised more than 250 volunteers during the 11 years she spent at Gulfcoast. She managed more than 7,700 cases, and served as the primary advocate on 3,800.</p><p>In the past four years, she brought in more than $500,000 to the program from foreclosure work, including grants from Sarasota County and private donors. </p><p>In 2010, she received the Steven Goldstein Award for excellence in a legal aid case from the Florida Bar, sharing the award with volunteer attorney Jim McDonald, who is 80.</p><p>A native of a small town in Mississippi, Boyle is married to Bradenton Police Chief Michael Radzilowski.</p><p>Radzilowski noted that Gulfcoast receives partial funding from police departments and sheriff's offices, through fines and arrests.</p><p>Like his wife, the police chief said he was concerned about Ruiz, and the denial of services.</p><p>“If this is how Gulfcoast Legal Services is going to provide legal aid to our disabled, then I believe that Pinellas, Sarasota and Manatee counties should not fund this organization,” he said.</p><p>Phillip D. King is executive director of the Glasser Schoenbaum Human Services Center in Sarasota, which hosts Gulfcoast and other social service agencies, who together serve more than 10,000 people a month. </p><p>“During the recent economic crisis, Gulfcoast has been vital in their efforts to help many people save their homes, as well as helping them with other issues. The success of Gulfcoast has been largely due to the passion and leadership of Elizabeth Boyle,” King said. “We consider her not being here on campus a great loss.”</p><p>In an email to her staff, Mullin called this story "inaccurate," but provided no details.</p>